The Velveteen Rabbit
Margery Williams Bianco, 1922
A toy rabbit is loved into reality, worn thin by affection and nearly thrown away — a small book about what love does to the thing that is loved.
Margery Williams Bianco
1881–1944
Its 1922 first edition was illustrated by William Nicholson, a British painter and woodcut artist whose bold, flat prints had already made him famous.
Feels like tenderness, love and melancholy.
What it costs to become real, told by someone who has already paid.
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” Books by Margery Williams Bianco
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